In the clouds again

Tonight I'm travelling up to Loughborough University to speak at tomorrow's Google Apps for Education User Group meeting. Together with the University of Portsmouth's Manish Malik I will be presenting a paper on our latest thinking around Cloud Learning Environments. Other speakers include Tony Hirst and Niall Sclater (both at the Open University), Nick Skelton (University of Bristol) and presided over by Martin Hamilton (Loughborough University). You can follow the entire day's proceedings by checking the Twitter hashtag #guug11. Here's our abstract:

Manish Malik (Faculty Learning and Teaching Coordinator at the University of Portsmouth) and Steve Wheeler (Associate Professor of Learning Technology at the University of Plymouth) discuss the recent developments and the patterns emerging within the CMS/LMS/VLE product sector. From BB & Moodle 1.0 to BBoogle & Moodle 2.0/Google to Sakai 3.0/Canvas to a GApps based learning environment. Also they highlight and demo an application that shows the potential that Google Apps and other loosely coupled Web 2.0 services have in creating an open Virtual Learning Environment that is cloud based or a "Cloud Learning Environment."

Image source by Marcos Papapopolus


In the clouds again by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Anatomy of a PLE

Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) do exactly what they say on the can - they are personal to each individual, created by them, owned by them, used by them within their lifelong learning. Originally a counterpoint to the institutional Managed Learning Environment (iMLE or 'VLE'), PLEs are becoming a much talked about concept, and were the prime focus of the recently held PLE Conference in Cornella, Barcelona. Delegates at the conference could not agree whether PLEs should remain the sole domain of the learner, or whether in some way they could be incorporated into institutional infrastructures. Some argued strongly for sole student ownership, vehemently opposed to any institutional meddling in a personal learning environment. Others held the position that PLEs should have some insitutional provision incorporated within them. Still others thought that PLEs should be part of the institutional infrastructure, brought within the protective envelope of the university fire wall. Many located themselves in middle ground positions. My personal view is that students own and create their PLE but that the iMLE also has something to offer them, even though it is highly problematic in its current form. I am arguing that many students tend to avoid using the iMLE because they either find it difficult to use, or irrelevant to their daily learning needs. It is a clash of concepts, no bridge seems possible, and the problem appears to be intractable.

I have been working with Manish Malik (University of Portsmouth) for some time now to try to reconceptualise PLEs, so that they are locatable within both informal and formal learning contexts. At the Barcelona PLE Conference we unveiled our ideas in a position paper, which we also share here on this blog. In previous posts I have argued provocatively that institutional VLEs present a number of problems for individual learners, not least the walled garden effect, which presents a great barrier to student freedom and creativity. I have played devil's advocate, role playing at high profile events to promote debate, engaging fruitfully with many knowledgeable peers, and in the process I have had some great fun. Now it's time to change direction a little and challenge the unhelpful binary of PLE versus VLE.

Firstly, we need to understand the true nature of the PLE - its anatomy. What does a PLE look like? What are its essential components? How does it differ from institutionally provided systems? Is there any common ground, and if so, how can this be harnessed? All these questions and more are yet to be answered, but in our view, the PLE is wider than the Web tools students use to create, find, organise and share content. It is also wider than the Personal Learning Network (PLN) of people and content that each of us generates when we learn informally or in formal contexts. This is represented in the first slide above.

In this representation of the PLE, we try take a more consiliatory perspective beyond the unhelpful binary discourse of 'PLE vs VLE'. We propose a hybrid approach. Essentially, we argue that students require structure and scaffolding when they first venture into digital learning environments. No-one is a digital native, no matter how much the Prensky theory is talked up. Yet the average institutional Managed Learning Environment is by nature dull, uninspiring and difficult to navigate. Web 2.0 tools (Cloud Learning Environment) are more attractive, easier to use and free, but are unprotected and vulnerable. Further, the content sent to the application ends up becoming the 'property' of the Internet company and is difficult to delete, a target for data mining. Whilst CLEs will not fully address all of the tensions between iMLEs and PLEs, we argue that they provide a tentative bridge to provide the best of both worlds in terms of affordances and interoperability. We would be very interested to hear your views on this proposal. Tomorrow: Physiology of a PLE

Related posts

Response to Anatomy of a PLE: Mark Smithers

The Dichotomies in Personal Learning Environments: Ismael Pena-Lopez

Mapping the PLE Sphere: Ismael Pena-Lopez

The ILE and FLE in Harmony: Ryan Tracey

Anatomy of a PLE by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Up Pompey (again)

I attended an excellent conference today at the University of Portsmouth, and it was the second time in as many months I have spoken there. There were 28 workshops and seminars in addition to my keynote speech. Just over 100 people attended from 3 of the faculties at the university, and there were several lively sessions to take part in. Martin Weller from the OU came in live via a webcast to talk about the intriguing topic of 'Academic output as collateral damage'. Also there from the OU was Tony Hirst, and it was a pleasure to meet him face to face for the first time, and talk about issues ranging from Google to assessment. His presentation was fittingly entitled: 'Making the most of Google'.

I also attended a session presented by Emma Duke Williams and her colleagues called 'Twispering in class' which explored the history, usefulness and application of Twitter as a tool for communication and reflection in formal learning contexts. Stewart Milton from Blue Orange Consulting gave an excellent, wideranging session on how to reach students through social media, which also covered the use of mobile handheld technologies. Both sessions drew quite a crowd, and provokes some good discussion. Manish Malik's session on 'Exam revision using Examopedia Wiki and Google Talk' was also well received, and prompted some quick fire questions from all those present.

I had the honour of kicking off the event with a 45 minute keynote that I entitled: 'Lifelong learning in a digital age: Inspiration and innovation through social media', in which I covered a lot of ground from disruptive technologies, through personal learning environments to the use of mobile phones in education, all of which seemed to be well received. All of the sessions were recorded through Camtasia and should be available for viewing soon on the conference website. Here is the link to my own keynote presentation on Camtasia with full audio. The slideset accompanying my keynote speech is below. Thanks to all those who organised such a great event, and also to all those who took part.

Lifelong learning in a digital age

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

Up Pompey (again) by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Keeping it real

I spent most of today over at the University of Portsmouth, where I led a 90 minute seminar/workshop on 'Learning 2.0: Web 2.0 in Education'. I was well looked after by several University of Portsmouth staff, inlcuding Manish Malik and his lovely wife, Emma Duke-Williams (not his wife - please refer to the separating comma), and the two Colins, Colin White and Colin Clarke. This morning Dr Clarke and his colleague Lucy Bailey took me on a tour of the ExPERT Centre (a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning), which was absolutely fascinating. One of the defining features of the Centre is its several simulation suites, including a fully equipped representation of an operating theatre, used to train student Operating Department Practitioners and Paramedics. The suite comes complete with a manikin that talks back to the students, breathes and mimics a number of other, um.... 'bodily functions'. In fact, just about the only thing it can't be programmed to do is act like my teenage daughter and constantly demand cash handouts, car rides to her boyfriend's house and back, and er... more money. All of the manikin's bodily functions can be programmed from the attached Mac computer, and the instructor can even programme in a sudden 'crisis' for the students to deal with. There are other simulated environments on the campus, including a courtroom for legal students to train in. In the ExPERT Centre I also saw a microbiology lab simulation and a simulated nursing ward. All of the above are equipped with remote controlled digital cameras and observation suites sited behind one-way mirrors.

The great thing about these kind of simulated environments is that students can build their confidence as well as their skills, while at the same time immersing themselves in realistic situations with no real risk of doing any harm. They learn by their mistakes and they also learn within situated contexts. They can also view back video footage of their performance so they can reflect on their actions and the consequences. This is clearly an expensive, but extemely powerful and effective use of technology to train professionals. In my own university next week, during the Plymouth e-Learning Conference, delegates will get the chance to visit our Dentistry school and use the Phantom Head training manikins - possibly even doing some fillings and/or pulling teeth! Simulation is obviously where it's at when it comes to the training of professionals.

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Up Pompey

When I was a lot younger I was a guitarist in a rock band. We were touring in 1982, and one of our bookings took us to play in the main hall of Portsmouth Polytechnic. It was a time of great celebration in Portsmouth (known by sailors as Pompey), because the Falklands War had just ended, and all the naval warships were returning home. After the gig, the band went down onto the seafront for something to eat before the long trek home, and I decided I would try a doner kebab for the first time. So there we were sitting in the back of our Transit Van, perched on the speakers and amplifiers, chomping away in the dark. I wasn't aware that there were any rules to eating doner kebabs, so I just chewed away at the pitta bread. Suddenly I was aware of a burning sensation. In the dark, I found a pile of steaming hot meat, coleslaw and chilli sauce in my lap. I had eaten away the underside of the pitta bread, and it had all dropped out.

Look, it's no laughing matter. It could have been fatal - the lethally hot chilli sauce could have eaten right through the denim of my jeans and caused untold damage to my future prospects. Driving home from Portsmouth to Plymouth covered in grease and chilli sauce was extremely uncomfortable. Time has moved on. Portsmouth Polytechnic is now the University of Portsmouth, and I still play the guitar, but I now try to steer clear of eating doner kebabs, particularly in the dark in the back of a transit van.

I'm back in Portsmouth this week as an invited speaker at the university. I will be hooking up with old pals Emma Duke-Williams (world famous in Portsmouth for her portrait of me as 'multi-me') and Manish Malik (with whom I have just written a paper on Cloud Learning Environments). Remember 'Wisdom of Clouds'? - Manish wrote that as a guest blogpost. I will be speaking on the topic of 'Learning 2.0: Web 2.0 Tools in Education', which will essentially take the form of a workshop and seminar. The session will take place on Wednesday 31st between 15.00-16.30. There will be some games and exercises for people to do, and some questions and answers time too. I hope to explore some of the possibilities and potential of tools such as blogs, wikis, microblogs and aggregators, and will also explore mashups, social tagging, and concepts such as 'wisdom of crowds' and folksonomies. I'm going to try to place all of this in the context of higher education, student engagement and communities of practice. It will be a tall order, I'm sure, but I'm confident it will be OK. After all, I have survived a direct hit from a doner kebab, and that's serious stuff.

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Wisdom of clouds

This is the first time I've done this, but it's a new year and a new broom. Here is the first Learning with 'E's guest blog post - it's by Manish Malik, who is based at the University of Portsmouth. He has some interesting ideas, and I am happy to host these on my own blog. You can find Manish's poll on his Edublend blog. I think it's an important discussion - so please read his post and then make your vote!

I have been meaning to write this for quite some time now. To be honest, at some point in the run up to the ALT-C 2009 conference, I got this idea. There is a shorter version of this post too. There were many people at a session titled "the VLE is Dead" hosted by James Clay, Josie Fraser, Graham Attwell, Nick Sharratt and Steve Wheeler aka Timbuckteeth :). Martin Weller blogged about the death of VLE/LMS too in Nov 2007.

Scott Leislie coined a term Loosely coupled teaching a month before that. Martin's prediction about a move towards loosely coupled teaching tools has examples in practice today. However, there is more to it. Let me explain:

PLE...a set of tools that the learners enjoy full control on and choice of. The tools within a PLE are most likely not used for the purpose of formal education of all learners within an educational institution. Each learner may use a different set of tools to support/enhance their informal learning.

VLE...a set of tools that the learners enjoy very little control over, if any, or choice of and is an institutional system that is mostly likely for formal education. Academics and the institutions have the most control on this learning environment. Learners may have a say in it to some extent.

Loosely coupled.....to quote Scott, "courses taught using contemporary social software/web 2.0 tools outside a course management system." - again the learner may have little control over these tools but the academic is the owner and has most control/choice. As it's a non institutional learning environment, it is most likely to support informal teaching and learning but may be used for formal teaching and learning too. I have blogged on this type of tools as my own personal teaching environment.

CLE or Cloud Learning Environment....The cloud can be seen as one big autonomous system not owned by any educational institution. Let the Academics or Learners be the users of some cloud based services, where all equally share the privileges like control, choice, sharing of content etc on these services. This is different from a PLE, a VLE and a PTE. For example Google Apps for universities is hosted on the cloud, not fully controlled by any educational institution and certainly not owned by one. The tools on it are to a great extent academic or learner controlled. Each "Google Site", for example, can be owned by an academic or a Learner and both users be given the same rights/control by one another (depending on who creates first). Likewise Google Docs can be owned and shared between learners themselves or learners and academics under their own control.

This gives all parties the same rights on same set of tools. This clearly has potential to enable and facilitate both formal and informal learning for the learner. Both the academic and the learner are free to use the tools the way they wanted and share and collaborate with anyone they wanted. This would not have been possible if either the academics or the learners or for that matter the institution designed and developed the set of tools or bought it from any one supplier. Google Apps was not designed just for institutions or for individuals, it was designed for collaboration both within and accross institutions.

CLEs also make it very easy to generate content and share it with the rest of the world in a DERPable (Discoverable, Editable, Repurposable and Portable) manner, in the spirit of the UKOER programme. With a bit of search engine optimisation it could work magic in terms of making the educational material that sits on a CLE visible and usable by the rest of the world.

Lastly, students at my institution love the Google Apps interface, which makes it very easy to get them to engage with their work using online tools. This can be seen from the crazy usage statistics of Google Sites where I now host my Examopedia.

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